#Democracy

“Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. … When students are seen as not sufficiently competent, it is likely to be computers that the school purchases rather than extra teacher’s time and extra human help. And when security agencies in this country feel that Canadian citizens harbour thoughts and might contemplate actions that the state doesn’t like, they don’t invite these citizens to discuss their grievances or alternate thoughts openly and on a basis of equality. Instead, telephones are tapped or files are assembled by purely technological means.” (p 71-72)

“Agents can demand a password to open your phone, without probable cause, Nielsen confirmed during the hearing. However, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) staff attorney Sophia Cope says the directive, which she calls confusing, also allows you to refuse to do so. That, of course, is not without its consequences she says in a statement to CBC News. Your device could be seized or detained. The border agent could delay your travel or even deny entry if you are not a U.S. citizen.” (¶ 9)

“Students take their cues for how to act from what they see happening out in the world, and ‘as [these incidents are] increasingly part of the national scene, I suspect we’ll see more of this,’ Ervin said. ‘College campuses are incubators of citizens of tomorrow, and they’ll take part in what they think is the political process.'” (¶ 15)

“In our more highly organised world we face a new problem. Something called education is given to everybody, usually by the State, but sometimes by the Churches. The teacher has thus become, in the vast majority of cases, a civil servant obliged to carry out the behests of men who have not his learning, who have no experience of dealing with the young, and whose only attitude towards education is that of the propagandist.” (p 110)

“One of the reasons I emphasize the link between public policies related to the provision of infrastructures and the spread of technology is the following: Rarely are there public discussions about the merits or problems of adopting a particular technology. … Regardless of who might own railways or transmission lines, radio [page break] … frequencies or satellites, the public sphere provides the space, the permission, the regulation, and the finances for much of the research. It is the public sphere that grants the ‘right of way.’ It seems to be high time that we, as citizens, become concerned about the granting of such technological rights of way.” (p 64-65)

“It is my conviction that nothing short of a global reformation of major social forces and of the social contract can end this historical period of profound and violent transformations, and give a manner of security to the world and to its citizens. … The viability of technology, like democracy, depends in the end on the practice of justice and on the enforcement of limits to power.” (p 5)

“Yet far from furthering the assimilation or even securing the loyalty of borderland East Slavs, Poland’s inept nationalizing policies and practices in the interwar period had just the opposite effect, producing by the end of the period what had not existed at the beginning: a consolidated, strongly anti-Polish Belarusian and — to an even greater extent — Ukrainian national consciousness. This happened through heavy-handed efforts to nationalize the land, the schools, and the churches of the region, and through the harsh repression of Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalist and social-revolutionary movements.” (p 100)

“Therefore, anti-oppressive research is not a process to discover knowledge, but a political process to co-create and rediscover knowledge. Through anti-oppressive research, we construct emancipatory, liberatory knowledge that can be acted on, by, and in the interests of the marginalized and oppressed.” (p 261-262)